A firewall is a piece of hardware and/or software that functions in a networked environment to control and/or prevent certain network traffic because of network security reasons. As different end-users often have different needs, a firewall usually can be customized by an end-user. In one example, an end-user may select one or more firewall exceptions to the firewall so that certain types of network traffic are allowed to pass. Specifically, in an operating system, a firewall control panel may allow an end-user to select one or more firewall exceptions (e.g., programs and/or services) to the firewall.
However, as operating systems evolve to become more sophisticated, the numbers of network facing services and features have increased as well. As a result, a firewall control panel can include a long list of firewall exceptions.
Unfortunately, a significant number of end-users may not be technically proficient to be able to understand and interact with such a long list of firewall exceptions. Not only would going through such a long list of firewall exceptions be time consuming, an end-user may not know which firewall exceptions to select.
Moreover, because different application program features associated with firewall exceptions may be interconnected functionally, an end-user that enables or disables a particular firewall exception may result in unintentionally impacting another application program feature.